Yes, decided lack of blogging these past few days. Frankly, things have been kind of slow up here, what with Summer making a hasty rush for the exit, like a diner skipping out on the bill, even as Fall, all wet and cool and gray, slips into the still-warm chair at the now unoccupied table, and sits patiently as the angry waitress clears off the remains of a meal that's coming out of her paycheck.
I suppose I could have written about some of the minutia: the rather uneventful board meeting last Saturday; or, the send-off party for one of the actors who is leaving the show a week early, wherein I discovered one of the other actresses is an alum of my high school, and in fact grew up just a few blocks from where my Grandmother used to live; or, the cleaning frenzy this past weekend that included finally removing the cat accoutrements that I've been reluctant to deal with since Jenny passed a mere two weeks ago.
That was really the hardest thing I've had to deal with recently: cleaning everything out, the water bowls, food dish, litter box, then setting them outside and letting the rain wash away the last of their contents. I vaccuumed and dusted, and swept and mopped, but there's still little vestiges of presence left in the hard-to-reach corners and under the bed, and will be for some time. I admit, I just didn't want to begin the process of removing those bits of hair and fuzz and dander - the last shreds of physical evidence that something other than myself once occupied this space. But, at some point you have to move on, move forward, let it go, sweep it clean. And doing it on a wet, but still relatively warm day seemed fitting.
Little-by-little things change, normalcy returns by incremental degrees.
Things will pick up next week surely, with the start of rehearsals; right now, I'm just waiting for a completed draft of the script so that I can start distributing it to my cast and production crew. It's promised for sometime this week, although I get a little more nervous with each passing day; there's so much I need to do: scheduling rehearsal blocks, solidifying design elements, getting marketing and publicity materials going, etc., etc., that can't really be accomplished without the most basic unit of measure - the script. But, I know it's coming, I just have to trust my playwright to get it turned in, hopefully, with enough lead-time to get it out to everyone who needs it before our first meeting Monday night.
And It Seems To Be The Way That Everyone Else Gets Around
Made a road-trip down south to go to my 30th high school reunion. I've been to a couple in the past, most recently the 25 year reunion, and attended again with just the smallest trepidation.
The thing about reunions is they're sort of the social equivalent of rubber-necking accidents on the freeway: everyone is older, balder, fatter, more unrecognizeable with each passing year, particularly when you either only see them once every five years, or, as was the case with many of my fellow classmates who attended this time around, you literally haven't set eyes on each other since the day you graduated. So, there's that definite sense of craning your neck to see if you do in fact recognize someone, or conversely, staring blankly at someone and having absolutely no idea who they are.
I guess we had a rather large graduating class by some standards, about 360 or so, if I recall correctly. And the thing is, you realize very quickly what a small number of them you had any kind of real social interaction. It wasn't until about my junior year that I experienced tentative inroads into the "A List set", that rarified elite of star athletes, cheerleaders, student government busy bodies, yearbook staff, et al, and until then my social circle was apparently fairly miniscule. Of the 150 or so alums who showed up for the festivities, I recognized maybe half (and that only because of the nametags-with-graduation-photo-attached), but the others? I had no idea who they were, couldn't recall having any of them in classes, or doing extra-curricular activities with any of them. Presumably, they represent that overwhelming mass in the middle of the bell curve: the majority of average kids who go through the educational process essentially invisible, never causing problems on the one hand, nor necessarily excelling in any particular skill or activity on the other.
Still, it was fun to catch up with a few people, the ones I did know 30 years ago, and with whom I still seemed to share at least enough common interest to be able to hold a congenial, if not particularly deep conversation with for five or ten minutes. Interestingly, we also seemed to comprise a significant number of those who managed to get the heck out of town at the earliest possible opportunity, and never look back.
Many of the kids in my graduating class apparently never left town, and while they've maintained contact with each other over the years, they also tend to emanate a strong scent of attempting to re-achieve past glory about them, as exemplefied by the charity basketball game held on Friday evening between members of our squad, which won a district championship during our Senior year, and the 2007-2008 championship squad. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that a bunch of over-the-hill guys pushing 50 are simply not going to be a match for a squad of healthy 18 and 19 year-olds, who played together only a few months ago; the kids were nice, kept things easy, let to old farts stay in the game until the 4th quarter, when they basically shut them down, although they still allowed the final score to be much closer than it had any right to be.
But the funny thing was, the old geezers spent most of the remainder of the weekend crowing over the fact that they managed to "lose" the game by less than 10 points; as if the kids HADN'T been slacking, and they'd actually maintained something resembling a competitive edge against them. They showed the game at least twice during the get-together on Saturday night, and many of them spent almost the entire evening in front of a big-screen TV pointing out their great moves, not really noticing that the kids they're playing are keeping distance, as if they were afraid too much contact in-close would injure one of these ancients stumbling-and-sweating themselves silly.
I suppose there's a certain satisfaction in returning, however briefly, to ones "glory days", but some of these guys seem to have a permanent address at that hotel; if the sheer level of self-delusion weren't somewhat amusing, it would just be sad and pathetic.
As for me, well, it was fun while it lasted, and I will probably try to keep contact with a handful of people I ran into, but frankly, I feel much better living in the here-and-now.
Just got back from dropping Jenny off at the Emergency Vet Clinic. She hasn't eaten anything since late Thursday/early Friday, drinking only a bit of water, listless - and most significantly, NOT sleeping next to my head for the last two nights.
The initial diagnosis from the X-Rays is lung cancer, but we'll know more later today when the results from the blood-work, and the radiologist's report comes in. Depending on what those show, I'll have to decide what to do next.
It's going a rough afternoon.
UPDATE:
Both the radiology report and the blood work have come up "inconclusive"; the spots in the X-Ray may be either pneumonia, or, cancer, but there's no way to make a definitive diagnosis without more testing. White blood cell count is elevated, but not dangerously so, and she's anemic and has low potasium levels, which, along with some other things apparantly indicates advanced heart disease.
So, they're running more tests, and should have the results on those before the end of the day. Hopefully, they'll be able to make a better determination regarding the lungs, and based on that, they'll give me a recommendation. If it IS just pneumonia, then it and the heart failure are treatable; if it does in fact turn out to be cancer, then treating the heart disease becomes somewhat moot.
Opening of the Show went off pretty well on Friday, despite getting started fifteen minutes late, which caused a back-up with turning over the house for our monthly late-night cabaret, which itself turned into a near sell-out (it makes things a little crazy, but our Managing Director LOVES it when he does the books!)
So, now I get a bit of a break before jumping into rehearsals for the show I'm directing in September, and of course, there will be production meetings and what-not, so I'm not off Scott-free as it is. Still, the weather seems to be settling into a pleasant late-Summerness, so I guess my timing could have been a lot worse in that regard as well.
